Recommendation on reliable external HDs

[nizmoz]

I have $200 I can spend at Best Buy in Rewards and a Gift Card. I want to get a replacement large external HD. Right now I currently have two old 500gb Western Digital HD's connected to a USB 2.0 hub into my AirPort Extreme router working fine, but both are out of space. I want to get an external but my worry is I also don't want to lose the data on the external if that one drive dies. So how do I go about preventing that with my funds I do have available? Any ideas?

One of my 500gb backs up time machine for my mac products the windows PC while the other one is my DATA drive right now.

 

[miles01110]

External hard drives are all the same in that once you've decided on a budget and/or desired capacity, the only important factor is the length of the warranty. Most external drive manufacturers (LaCie, for example) just stick whatever fourth-party drive they can get for a cheap price in a nice-looking enclosure.

That being said, your most cost effective solution going forward would be to buy your own hard drive enclosure and a separate third-party drive from Newegg (or wherever). You'll be able to change out drives in the future if you upgrade or if it fails.

 

[Fishrrman]

Can you spare $17?
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch_v3.asp?px=DN&scriteria=AA78067
(Note: this offer may be time-sensitive, NFI by poster)
Additional note: I have an older (USB2) version of this gadget. You can IGNORE the comments on the site about it being "difficult to use" because the drive sits at a slight angle. Works great with no problems for me.

It's USB3 but that's backward-compatible with USB2.

You can even boot from these things. I run my test copy of Lion on one, connected to my iMac.

Then, just add one or more "bare drives" of your choice, and you have a dandy desktop storage solution.

When those WD enclosures go bad on you, just open them up, and take the internal drives and use them in the dock.

The only downside I can see by using a "docking station solution" is that they are "less portable" than a standalone "external" hard drive (hard drive in an enclosure). They are still easily moved around, however.

 

[nizmoz]

Since I got like no help, I went ahead and picked up two Seagate Go-Flex Desks 2tb each for home. Hope they work well. So far seems to with my Airport Extreme.

 

[Fishrrman]

sorry, duplicate -- deleted